Open Thread 12/15/17

Greetings and Salutations. It has been a crazy week and I feel like I was running behind the whole time. When I am in the home-stretch of a review, everything else falls by the wayside. It seems another Open Thread is in order as the links have really piled up.

The featured photo at the top of the post is a friction folder by our friend Fuad Accawi of Acre Metalworks. Fuad was at our weekly lunch, and it was good to see him again. Fuad recorded an episode of Forged in Fire earlier this year. As required by show rules, he has been tight lipped about the result. His episode is expected to air in the not too distant future. As soon as a date is announced we have a post in the hopper ready to give you a heads-up.

Two people were killed and three were injured in two stabbings in Maastricht on Thursday night, the police announced. One person was arrested on suspicion of involvement in these incidents. “Investigation showed that there is no reason to assume that these incidents had a terrorist motive”, the police said.

According to the police, a fight on Botsaarsstraat around 9:00 p.m. ended with a man being stabbed to death. The identity of the victim is still unclear. The suspect fled.

Ten minutes later there was another stabbing on Joseph Postnesstraat. Here a woman was killed. She also hasn’t been identified. Two people were injured. A short time later, the police found a third injured person in a nearby mosque. All three wounded were taken to hospital. The police said nothing about the severity of their injuries.

Local residents told newspaper AD that the man and woman who were killed were both from Syria. According to them, the suspected perpetrator is also Syrian and a family member of the victims. The residents said that the suspect went to a local mosque with a knife in his hand, and that he recently also stabbed someone in the leg in the same mosque. The police could not confirm this.

Dutch military police on Friday shot and wounded a man armed with a knife, who burst into their office at Amsterdam’s busy Schiphol airport, police told AFP.

“This afternoon a man came into the office of the Marechaussee (military police) here at Schiphol and threatened my colleagues with a knife,” said police spokesman Dennis Muller.

“He was shot in the leg and taken to hospital in Amsterdam.”

My father immigrated from Holland in 1968. I am first-generation American on my dad’s side (my mom’s side landed at Jamestown). I have a lot of family in Holland, including my brother, and I try to keep up on what is happening in the Old Country.

AN(OTHER) INTERESTING DOCUMENTARY ON UK KNIFE CRIME:

A GREAT ARTICLE ON THE BOWIE KNIFE:

In his book “American Knives: The First History and Collector’s Guide,” author Harold L. Peterson put it best when he wrote, “In the history of American arms, three weapons stand out above all the rest: the Kentucky rifle, the Colt revolver and the Bowie knife.” Peterson went on to say, “Each was a superb weapon, but more than that, each became so much a part of the American scene that it transcended its role in history and became a part of the great American legend. Of none is this truer than the Bowie knife.”

What exactly is a Bowie knife? Opinions vary and definitions are as diverse as the knives themselves. Among arms students, there are those who feel that a Bowie can be any sheath knife with a clipped point—regardless of size—while others deem any large knife, regardless of blade shape, a Bowie. Finally, there are those who feel that virtually all of the sheath knives produced from around 1830 through the turn of the century (the knife’s greatest period of popularity) should qualify as Bowies. To the modern blade enthusiast, each of these points of view carry some justification; however, among serious collectors, vintage knives with the clip point are the most sought after, and are referred to as the classic form of the Bowie knife.

Mark Zalesky of Knife Magazine co-authored an extremely thorough book on the history of the Bowie Knife. It is actually the catalog from a gallery exhibit at the Historic Arkansas Museum, which Mark helped organize. He is a recognized authority on Bowies, and I will be posting a book review soon. I bought a copy myself at a recent Friday lunch.

The reality is, there is a small but still significant percentage of the world’s population that feels no empathy for their fellow man, and no remorse for maiming or killing them. These are sociopaths and psychopaths — they don’t care.

For the past few years knife attacks have been on the rise throughout the world. Much of the violence by African and Middle Eastern immigrants in Europe has come in the form of crazed knife attacks. Even China has seen an explosion of random large-scale knife killings, and in New York City, knife attacks are almost a weekly occurrence.

With this state of escalated violence, knowing how to defend oneself from an edged weapons attack is an indispensable part of everyone’s self-protection plan. IMO, knife training is more important than unarmed defense training. The few groups we teach that appreciate this type of instruction the most are: military, law enforcement and prison guards – that’s because their edged weapons programs are severely lacking.

A 42,000-square-foot redevelopment of the former Camillus Cutlery headquarters to turn it into apartments and retail space has been completed.

Camillus Mills, developed by Thomas Blair of Skaneateles and Franklin Properties of Syracuse, features 29 apartments and 8,500-square-feet of retail space.

The converted knife factory is on 4.35 acres at 54 W. Genesee Street in the heart of the village of Camillus. The $9.7 million renovation project preserved the property’s National Register Landmark historic structure status while refurbishing the interior.

Of the 29 apartments, 21 are rented, project officials said. There are one- and two-bedroom units, which range in price from $950 to $1,500 a month.